Share your thoughts on the new On-Object Interaction feature (preview)

[RosieL]

Hit Reply to tell us what you think about the new On-Object Interaction feature so we can continue to improve.

For example:

• What changes would you like to see?
• If you turned off the preview switch, why?
• Any suggestions for addititional settings or capabilities?

Thanks,

-Power BI team

To read more about the feature, see the announcement in the Power BI Product Blog or our documentation on how to Use on-object interaction

FAQs:

• Q: How can I open multiple panes at once?
  • A: You can CTRL + click or right click on the unselected pane you wish to open and choose "Open in new pane"
• Q: Where did aggregations move to?
  • A: It's still on right click of a field, or you can use the new flyout aggregations dropdown while choosing or swapping a field.
• Q: Where did drillthrough and tooltip page setup move to?
  • A: Drillthrough is now in the page settings of the format pane under Page Information > Page type > Drillthrough or Tooltip.

[EwanT]

Hi Iberstein,

Thanks for the feedback. We have planned releases to address issues we are hearing. We know that some people adjust after "moving their cheese" but this isn't the case with this one. We know that additional options are needed for our users. Replicating Excel only isn't the goal here, but we are trying to move toward familiar interactions across Microsoft: on-object editing, having more functionality in the ribbon, and if you have seen the news from Microsoft Build work as part of Fabric. 

With all that said, we will continue to gather feedback from the community and if something works for one product but not for Power BI we will adjust to make sure that it will. 

Please stay tuned for our June and July releases. There will be options to make the menus easier to use

[dancarr22]

Dislike this new feature.  And showed it to several other users who also disliked it.  If you add this PLEASE include an easy way to add back the visualizations pane.  Recognize Msft wants to make this similar to Excel - but Excel is old. Might be better to bring the past into the future - instead of making new apps try to work like 'old' apps.  Thanks

[EwanT]

Hi dancarr22,

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry you dislike the feature. I'm hoping some of our upcoming releases will help make this easier for you and the other users you have spoken to. There is a big similarity here with Excel, but we aren't trying to copy them 1:1. While designing this feature we have been making updates to align with a lot of Microsoft products, but we have through this process identified which fit the needs of Power BI users current and future. Unfornately we can't develop everything all at once.

Please stay tuned for the June and July releases. We will be launching some new features like the ability to move the Build a visual menu to the left side of the screen, so you can work closer to the way that you had previously, as well as some other things. I hope you will give it a try and let us know what you think after.

[DarrenW]

I honestly thought I'd like this, but eventually turned it off.  In the end it was the inability to drag and drop fields to change the order in a table that did it.  Yes I know you can move them within the right click menu but that's always a faff.  I liked the ability to change chart titles etc by clicking on them but that was about it.

[EwanT]

Hi DarrenW,

Thanks for the feedback and also for a new word. I hadn't heard faff before. Going to have to use that with some of my colleagues from the UK and see their reactions.

Now to business 🙂

Not being able to reorder tables is caused by the "Suggest a type" feature. While this is on Power BI only looks at the data added and ignores the order to suggest the visual type, so reorder is disabled. There are a few things that you can do for this:

• If you are working with the on-object Build a visual menu, you can turn toggle off
• You can click the Table icon in the Visual type selector. This will automatically turn the toogle off. This is the case for all selection in this UI
• If you use the visualizations gallery to insert a table into your report, the toggle will be off by default

If you are finding that you aren't using the "Suggest a type" feature or you don't want it. You can go to the Options dialog and under Global Report settings and uncheck "Suggest a visual type by default"

Hopefully with this new information I can entice you you to try out our June release coming out soon. If so, please continue to give feedback if you have time.

[lastmileguy]

Not a fan of this as it stands, I think you should have the option to have both the old way, new way or both. I would like this if i had both.

[EwanT]

Hi lastmileguy,

Thanks for the feedback. We do have future releases to make this work similarily to as it doesn't with the preview feature off. Please stay tuned for the June and July releases. 

[tompkinsa]

I do not like this feature at all. I usually enjoy new features and improvements, but this one is not very user friendly and makes modifications rather cumbersome.

[EwanT]

Hi Tompkinsa,

Thanks for the feedback. We have some upcoming features in the June and July releases that will help with some of the issues that have been mentioned on the forum. Would you be able to let me know which modifications have become cumbersome for you. I'd like to be able to address this and that information will be helpful. 

[eabrams]

I was unable to find the Drill-Through filters option and spent about 30 minutes looking for how to add filters to my drill through before I just gave up and converted back to the original view.

[EwanT]

Hi eabrams,

I think I can help with this one. Drill-through has moved into the Format pane under Page information. Selecting Drillthrough from the Page type selector here:

Then the Drill-through options will show up:

You can press the +Add date button to add fields. If you want to drag and drop like you use to right click on the cylinder icon(Data) and select Show in new pane. This will open the Data pane with Format and you can drag your field to the section that contains the +Add data

[Turkish]

Hey all!

In my opinion, definately not one of your best features. Not a fan at all! I have turned the preview off.
Highlights for cons:
- Reports crash frequently, and I am not sure of the cause

- There is not enough room in the pop up window to see the fields efficiently. This is amplified based on where on the screen the visual is to be edited and we are unable to move the pop up window to see full pop up

- After using the "old" or current method, this isn't as intuitive as I would have imagined it would or could have been

Pros:

- Switch visuals is easy

You might consider swapping the way it is currently designed. Use the icon on the visual to a) to swap visuals, and b) edit the appearance of the visual while leaving the data selection in the current visuals pain. Although I prefer the drag and drop of the column or measure for rows/columns/values etc, I can see if the selection method using ">" would be useful for those new to PBI.

Hope this helps.

[EwanT]

Hi Turkish,

Thanks for the feedback. It's always helpful to share your thoughts about Power BI with us.

-If the dialog appears to report the crash, please continue to report that so it can be looked at by Engineering. The June release will be out soon. Please let me know if you are still experiencing crashing with the June release. Hopefully that bug isn't still happening to you

-We are working on a fix for the pop menu but the release is TBD. If you are willing to try out our June release you will be able to attach the Build a visual pop up to the pane switcher. This would be a workaround until an update can be released for the size of the pop up windows

-Drag and drop is something we will continue to support. The > is can be useful for new users, but this was also added for accessibility support. I'll share your feedback with the team about de-coupling visual selection and data selection

[LauriePfeiffer]

cOn the RTC (Return to clinic order) there is an option for 323 comprehensive care and 704 gender specific care.  But nation wide many of the women are in 322 general primary care clinics and we are unable to see the orders cancelled discontinued in these clinics well for women veterans.  Is there a way you can add gender/identify to this report so we can better review prevention requirements

[EwanT]

Hi LauriePfeiffer,

I don't believe this was meant for this thread. Hopefully the information you are sharing isn't sensitive.

[arpost]

Not sure if this has already been reported, @RosieL, but with on-object interaction enabled, reports crash when you try to add the same field to a visual. Use case would be having a field and then a count of occurrences and/or distinct count.

[Rudz]

Me too. A fix is coming in the May release. I've had to turn off the feature because I do this all the time and it crashes every time!

[C4YNelis]

Hi team,

I've tried to work with it for a while, but I too have turned it off, because it's just not as easy to work with as the classic way. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Personally, I keep loosing track of the format pane. Imho, it's just not convenient to have to right-click the visual to select the format pane every time. It would be better to have the on-object-editing work alongside a pinnable format pane.

2. This also goes for the Data pane, though to a lesser extend. It's really not an option to hide the Data pane, because many times you quickly want to see which tables / fields / measures are being used. There is a clear advantage to the on-object adding when you have many fields to add to visuals further away from the Data pane, since it's so close to the visual. But doesn't make the Data pane indispensible.

3. Maybe it's a coincidence, but ever since there is on-object editing, it is (sometimes) (nearly) impossible to key in a value for Width (I'm not sure about height). For instance, just now, I wanted to type in a Width of 1220, but I did not manage to get more than 12 into the field. By that time, the visual is already resizing and the two remaining digits are brutelly ignored. Clicking the Width field forces a full selection (and thus overwrite) of the value, rather than allowing me to add numbers, so trying again, results in exactly the same behavior. This really makes this feature unworkable for me.

4. The on-object style window sometimes unnecessarely and annoyingly overlaps with the filtermenu or open panes, preventing me from seeing what I wanted to see. Also, I see no added value in being able to change the visual type this way. Normally you start with choosing the right visual. Why would you want to change this afterwards?

All in all, to me it feels like we're trying to change a winning team. To increase developer and user experience, I'd rather see different changes, such as:

- formatting options for existing fields when connecting with direct query to existing data sets or

- generate dashboards from different workspaces (so that I can produce a management dashboard without having to copy all source reports to a separate management workspace, solely created for this purpose.

- while the previous is not yet possible, a way to overwrite existing copies of reports from different workspaces.

- aggregation capabilities for fields when personalizing a visual in the service

- the option to change the nature of a top-N filter type as a user in the service

- the option to call bookmarks from any report (users have a hard time remembering in which report they made bookmarks)

- an easy way to track which reports (in use in the service) use certain sources (preferably all the way down to the original connectors, making it easier to track whatever needs to be updated when sources change).

- vast improvements to slicers overall, slicers being such a key asset in many reports.

- etc.

I know, I need to move over to the ideas section.

Just my two cents, thanks for your time and for a great product,

cheers,

Niels

[Paulius]

Really difficult to be productive. 
Example: I have multiple visuals and I want to change, let's say, witdth of 5 text boxes at once. 
Well no, I can't because now I need to click on each visual. If I want to use selection pane for easier 'clicking' - oh wait, I can't. 

[Floriandavy]

Very bad to chose visual 

[shaherbano]

how to edit the sparklines added to a table visual: the 2 values were sparlikes and I can't find a way to edit them